the guilt of those who are destroying them, and moreover, the difficulty of believing they could be lost, came forcibly upon me. When everything looked so calm, regular, and smiling, the church bell going for service, high and low, young and old flocking in, others resting in the porch, and others delaying in the churchyard, as if there were enjoyment in the very cessation of those bodily motions which for six days had harassed them, (but I need not go on describing what both of us have seen a hundred times,) I said to myself, What a heaven on earth is this! how removed, like an oasis, from the dust and dreariness of the political world! And is it possible that it depends for its existence on what is without, so as to be dissipated and vanish at once upon the occurrence of certain changes in public affairs?' I could not bring myself to believe that the foundations beneath were crumbling away, and that a sudden fall might be expected."

He replied by one of his occasional flights" If Rome itself, as you say, is not to last, why should the daughter who has severed herself from Rome? The amputated limb dies sooner than the wounded and enfeebled trunk which loses it."

"Say this anywhere in Rome than on this staircase," I answered. "Come, let us find a more appropriate place for such extravagances; and I took him by the arm, and we began to descend. We made for the villa on the Palatine, and in our way thither, and while strolling in its walks, the following discussion took place, which of course I have put together into a more compact shape than it assumed in our actual conversation.

"What I mean," said he, in continuation, " is this: that we, in England, are severed from the centre of unity, and therefore no wonder our church does not flourish. You may say to me, if you please, that the church of Rome is corrupt. I know it; but what then? If (to use the common saying) there are remedies even worse than the disease they practise on, much more are remedies conceivable which are only as bad, or but a little better. To cut off a limb is any how a strange mode of saving it from the influence of some constitutional ailment. Indigestion may cause cramp in the extremities, yet we spare our poor feet, notwithstanding. I do not wish to press analogies; yet, surely, there is such a religious fact as the existence of a great catholic body, union with which is a Christian privilege and duty. Now, we English are separate from it."

I answered, "I will grant you thus much,-that the present is an unsatisfactory, miserable state of things; that there is a defect, an evil, in existing circumstances which we should pray and labour to remove; yet I can grant no more. The church is founded on a doctrinethe gospel of Truth; it is a means to an end. Perish the church catholic itself, (though, blessed be the promise, this cannot be,) yet let it perish rather than the Truth should fail. Purity of faith is more precious to the Christian than unity itself. If Rome has erred grievously in doctrine (and in thinking so we are both of one mind,) then is it a duty to separate even from Rome."

"You allow much more," he replied, "than most of us are willing

to do; yet even you, as it seems to me, have not a deep sense enough of the seriousness of our position. Recollect, we did that at the Reformation which is a sin, unless we prove it to be a duty. It was, and is, a very solemn protest. Would the seraph Abdiel have made his resistance a triumph and a boast, spoken of the glorious stand he had made, or made it a pleasant era in his history? Would he have gone on to praise himself, and say, 'Certainly, I am one among a thousand; all of them went wrong but I, and they are now in hell, but I am pure and uncorrupt, in consequence of my noble separation from those rebels'? Now, certainly, I have heard you glory in an event which at best was but an escape as by fire, an escape at a great risk and loss, and at the price of a melancholy separation."

I felt he had, as far as the practical question went, the advantage of me. Indeed it must be confessed that we protestants are so satisfied with intellectual victories in our controversy with Rome as to think little of that charity which "vaunteth not herself, is not puffed up, doth not behave herself unseemly."

He continued:" Do you recollect the notion entertained by the primitive Christians concerning catholicity? The church was, in their view, one vast body, founded by the apostles, and spreading its branches out into all lands,-the channel through which the streams of grace flowed, the mystical vine through which that sap of life circulated which was the privilege of those and those only who were grafted on it. In this church there can be no division. Pass the axe through it, and one part or the other is cut off from the apostles. There cannot be two distinct bodies, each claiming descent from the original stem. Indeed, the very word catholic witnesses to this. Two apostolic bodies there may be without contradiction of terms, but there is necessarily but one body catholic." And then, in illustration of this view, he went on to cite, from memory, the substance of passages from Cyril and Augustine, which I suspect he had picked up from some Romanist friend at the English college. I here give them as they are found in their respective authors.

The first extract occurs in a letter written by Augustine to a Donatist bishop:

"I will briefly suggest a question for your consideration. Seeing that we witness at this day the church of God, called catholic, according to the prophecy concerning it, diffused throughout the world, we think we ought not to doubt that herein is a most plain accomplishment of holy prophecy, confirmed as it was by our Lord in the Gospel, and by the apostles, who, agreeably to the prediction, so extended it. Thus St. Paul preached the Gospel and founded churches from Jerusalem round about through all Asia unto Illyricum, as appears from his own epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, and the like. John also writes to seven churches, which are typical representatives of the whole church, Smyrna, Sardis, &c. With all these churches we, at this day, communicate, as is plain; and it is equally plain that you Donatists do not communicate with them. Now, then, I ask you to assign some reason why Christ should forfeit His heritage spread throughout the world, and all at once be pent up in Africa, where you are, nor even in the whole of it. For your community, which bears the name of Donatus, evidently is not in all places-i. e., catholic. If you say ours is not the catholic, but nickname it the Macarian, the rest of Christendom differs from you; whereas you yourselves must own, what every one who knows you will testify, that yours is known as the Donatist denomination. Please to tell me, then,

how the church of Christ has vanished from the world, and is found only among you; whereas our cause is defended, without saying a word, by the plain fact, that we see in it a fulfilment of Scripture prophecy." *

The next is from one of the same father's treatises, addressed to a friend :

66

Rejecting all those who philosophize neither religiously nor yet on religious subjects, or who, from the pride of intellect or of resentment, deviate from the rule and communion of the church catholic, or who slight the light of Holy Scripture and that privilege of the elect people, the New Testament,. we must hold fast the Christian religion, and the communion of that church which is, and is called, catholic, not only by its members but even by all its enemies. For, will they or will they not, even heretics themselves, and the children of schism, when they speak not with their own people but with strangers, call it nothing but catholic? Indeed they would not be understood, unless they characterized it by that name which it bears throughout the world."+

The last was from Cyril's explanation of the doctrine of the one holy catholic church

:

"Whereas the name church is used variously. . . . as (for instance) it may be applied to the heresy or persuasion of the manichees, &c., therefore the creed has carefully committed to thee the confession of the one holy catholic church, in order that thou mayest avoid their revolting meetings, and remain always in the holy catholic church in which thou wast regenerated. And if perchance thou art a traveller in a strange city, do not simply ask, 'Where is the house of God?" for the multitude of persuasions attempt to call their hiding-places by that name; nor simply, Where is the church?' but, Where is the catholic church?' for this is the peculiar name of this the holy mother of us all, who is the spouse of the only begotten son."‡

After giving some account of these passages, he continued-" Now, I am only contending for the fact that the communion of Rome constitutes the main body of the church catholic, and that we are split off from it, and in the condition of the Donatists; so that every word of Augustine's argument to them could be applied to us. This, I say, is a fact; and if it be a grave fact, to account for it by saying that they are corrupt is only bringing in a second grave fact. Two such serious facts that we are separate from the great body of the church, and that it is corrupt-should, one would think, make us serious; whereas we behave as if they were plus and minus, and destroyed each other. Or rather, we triumph in the Romanists being corrupt, and we deny they are the great body of Christians, unfairly merging their myriad of churches under the poor title of the church of Rome; as if unanimity destroyed the argument from numbers."

"Stay! not so fast!" I made answer; "after all, they are but a part, though a large part, of the Christian world. Is the Greek communion to go for nothing, extending from St. Petersburg to Corinth and Antioch? or the Armenian churches? and the English communion which has branched off to India, Australia, the West Indies, the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia? The true state of the case is this: the condition of the early church, as Augustine and Cyril describe it, exists no more; it is to be found nowhere. You may apply, indeed, the terms they used to the present time, and call the Romanists

Ep. 49. Ed. Benedict.

+ De vera Rel. c. 7., n. 12. Cyril Hieros. Catech. xviii. 12.

catholics, as they claim; but this is a fiction and a theory, not the expression of a visible fact. Is it not a mere theory by which the Latin church can affect to spread itself into Russia? I suspect you might ask in vain for their churches under the name of catholic throughout the autocrat's dominions, or in Greece, as well as in England or Scotland. Where is the catholic Bishop of Winchester or Lincoln ? where the catholic church in England as a visible institution? No more is it in Scotland; not to go on to speak of parts of Germany or the new world. All that can be said by way of reply is, that it is a very considerable communion, and venerable from its consistency and antiquity."

"That is the point, interrupted my companion; "they maintain that, such as they are, such they ever have been. They have been from the first the catholics. The schismatical Greeks, the nestorians, the monophysites, and the protestants have grown up at different times, and on a novel doctrine or foundation."

"Have a care," I answered, " of diverging to the question of apostolicity. We are upon the catholicity of the Latin church. If we are to speak of antiquity, you yourself will be obliged to abandon its cause, for you are as decided as myself upon its corruptions from primitive simplicity. Foundation we have as apostolical as theirs, unless you listen to the Nag's-head calumny; and doctrine much more apostolical. Please to keep to the plain tangible fact, as you expressed it when you began, of the universal or catholic character of the Roman communion.'

He was silent for awhile, so I proceeded.

"Let me say a word or two more on the subject I had in hand when you interposed. I was observing that the state of things is certainly altered since Augustine's time-that is, in matter-of-fact divisions, cross divisions and complicated disarrangements have taken place in these latter centuries which were unknown in the fifth. We cannot, at once, apply his words as the representatives of things now existing; they are, in great measure, but the expression of principles to be adopted. May I say something further without shocking you? I think dissent and separatism present features unknown to primitive Christianity-so unknown that its view of the world does not provide a place for them. A state of things has grown up of which hereditary dissent is an element. All the better feelings of stability, quietness, loyalty, and the like, are in some places enlisted in its favour. In some places, as in Scotland, dissent is the religion of the state and country. I am not supposing that such outlying communities have blessings equal to the church catholic; only, while I condemn them as such, I would contend that they retain so much of privilege, so much of the life and warmth of that spiritual body of which they are irregular shoots, as to secure their individual members from the calamity of being altogether external to it. In the latter ages of Judaism, the ten tribes, and afterwards the Samaritans, and then the proselytes of the gate, present a parallel, as having a position beyond the literal scope of the Mosaic law. I shall scruple, therefore, to apply the strong language which Cyprian uses against schismatics to the

Scottish presbyterians or the Lutherans. At least, they have the Scriptures. You understand why I mention this-to shew, by an additional illustration, that not every word that the fathers utter concerning the church catholic at once applies to the church of this day. Other differences between their church and our church might be mentioned-e.g., the tradition of the early church was of an historical character, of the nature of testimony; and possessed an authority superadded to the church's proper authority as a divine institution. It was a witness, far more perfect in its way, but the same in kind, as the body of ancient writers may be for the genuineness of Cæsar's works. It was virtually infallible. Now, however, this accidental authority has long ceased, or, at least, is indefinitely weakened; and to resist it is not so obviously a sin against light. Here, then, is another reason for caution in applying the language of the fathers concerning schism to our own times, since they did not in their writings curiously separate the church's intrinsic and permanent authority from her temporary office of bearing witness to the apostolic doctrine as to an historical fact."

"I must take time to think of this," he replied; "meanwhile, you at least grant me that the Latin communion is the main portion of Christendom-that participation with it is especially our natural position-and that our present separation from it is a grievous calamity, as such, and, under the circumstances, nothing short of a solemn protest."

"I grant it," said I.

"And, in consequence, you discard, henceforth and for ever, the following phrases, and the like—our glorious emancipation from Rome,' the noble stand we made against a corrupt church,' 'our enlightened times,' 'the blind and formal papists,' &c. &c." "We shall see," I answered-"we shall see.'

won

We walked some little way in silence; at length, he said—“I der what use you intend to make of the view you just now SO eagerly propounded, of the difference of circumstances between the present and the ancient church. It leads, I suppose, to the justification of some of those ill-starred theories of concession which are at present so numerous ?"

To tell the truth, I did not see my way clearly how far my own view ought to carry me. I saw that, without care, it would practically tend to the discarding the precedent of antiquity, and was not unwilling to have some light thrown upon the subject; so I affected, for the moment, a latitudinarianism which I did not feel." Certainly," I replied, "it would appear to be our duty to take things as we find them; not to dream about the past, but to imitate, under changed circumstances, what we cannot fulfil literally. Christianity is intended to meet all forms of society; it is not cast in the rigid mould of Judaism. Forms are transitory-principles are eternal: the existing church but an accidental development and type of the invisible and unchangeable. It will always have the properties of truth; it will be ever (e. g.) essentially conservative and aristocratic; but its policy and measures will ever vary according to the age. In the seventeenth century, it was inclined to the Romanists-in the nineteenth, it was